Rainy Easter

I woke up one Easter morning recently, having fallen asleep in a recliner the night before, to a bright sky and falling rain. It was that quiet kind of Easter morning, filled with reflections as I puttered around, preparing my traditional Easter Deviled Eggs for the family gathering. There was a moment that stopped me and reduced me to tears. But only a moment.

My mother died in April - just around Easter. That makes it a bittersweet holiday for me.

For many people, Spring is a time for renewal and change and all the things we associate with new birth and flowers and crops blooming.

For me, Autumn is that time.

Walt Disney famously said "Without change there would be no butterflies."  It's a motto I keep on my desk at work and write at the end of my e-mails. To remind me that, no matter how difficult transitions are they are necessary to life.

I love Autumn. Usually I don't care for the color orange. But there is something about the oranges of fall -- the yellow-orange, burnt-orange, red-orange variations -- that makes me feel good. At work we like to get out of the office on our 15 minute breaks and take a walk. Recently, a coworker and I were talking about the colors of fall and he shared with me that he had read somewhere that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has the highest number of color variations (i.e. the highest number of varieties of deciduous tree and bush, each with it's own particular shade) of any state. And I can totally see that. I grew up in a little valley with "mountains" (technically they are hills, but we called them mountains like everyone else in the Appalachian trenches!) practically on my doorstep. You have never seen such color!

And maybe that's why the colors of Spring seem pale to me in comparison. Pale green of new growth is so weak next to the vibrant shades of plants in their final bloom, going out with a burst of red and yellow.

But there's also the fact that, to me, Autumn is more a beginning than an ending, as some see it. I see this as the time that nature settles down to peaceful sleep to recharge for the oncoming year. Some people see life as a Life/Death cycle. To me it continues and is so much more. From the pungent loam of those leaves on a forest floor, a tiny seedling will stay hidden and warm until spring, when it will be fertilized by the leaves left it by the bigger trees the previous fall.

I was born in November. I love the crisp Autumn air, sweatshirt-and-jeans weather, and the smell of wood stove smoke on the air. Lit pumpkins on porches and the harvest coming in. American Football games and the start of the school year (orange-yellow busses and No 2 pencils and brand new jeans. I adore new notebooks and opening chapters in textbooks!)  I love the beginning of the countdown to Thanksgiving and Christmas (but not too early, please! No need to rush it!)  To me, September through early December is all about anticipation and dreams and beautiful sensations.

But there is also the fact that my mother and I shared this season. Her birthday was late October, just before Halloween. Mine was a week or two later. We shared a birth sign, and we shared something of a claim to this time of year.

It's been more than 20 years now since she moved on. It's taken me almost as long to get adjusted to her being gone. I miss her in the Spring, but that's a sad, bad memories kind of missing. In the Autumn, it feel more like a celebration. She, for one, adored yellow. And as I see the leaves turning yellow, I think of her and her green and yellow dining room. And her yellow roses.  And I see her walking down a leaf-matted path through the woods, probably getting ready to take the Road Less Traveled.

  (Hear it at this link - Poets.org)  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717

The Road Not Taken
published in 1916 by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one was far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth. 

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worth them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
To roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Those Little Things

A recent post on Facebook started me thinking.

When my mom died when I was a teenager, I went through a really bad spot in my life. At 17, I didn't have the skills to ask for help or for comfort, or to really appreciate it when offered. One of our family friends was a secretary at the high school. Whenever I would come into the office, she would give me a hug. I didn't know how to react at the time, but when I looked back on it, it meant so much to me. Recently, I was finally able to thank her for that, only to find she didn't really even remember it. Point - sometimes the small things you do for people out of the goodness of just who you are can have a bigger impact on them then you ever, ever know. I'd say - go with those benevolent impulses!

Around the same time, I ended up being a Counselor at Camp Penn church camp.  Being a person with ADD and an inquistive mind, I have become really good at making plans, starting them, and then faltering as I try to keep the momentum going.  I am a deeply spiritual person as well, and I have made valiant efforts to read through the Bible (which I have managed to do, just not all at once) and to consistently read a daily devotional, as well as attempts at daily journalling, sometimes religiously-based. In previous years, I got to be what was called a Junior Counselor and, in that role, I was going through a phase where I was reading a college-geared devotional from Radio Bible Class, similiar to the Upper Room, called Campus Journal. For the duration of my week as a Junior Counselor, I was reading it regularly every morning.  I made friends with a younger girl who held the unofficial title of "Pre-camper Keeper." The job essentially consisted of wrangling the children of the counselors who were too young for this particular camp.  When I came back the following year in the role of full-fledged counselor, she had risen to my old rank of Junior Counselor. By this point, I was still trying to read the devotional, but I was pretty much failing to do so. One day, I happened to notice her reading her own copy. She told me she'd been reading it since I had introduced her to it the previous year. I hadn't even remembered telling her about it!

It's something I have thought about occasionally over the years. How many ways to do we really influence the world around us, without even knowing it? How many times do we interact with people, make offhand comments we don't even remember? There's a lot of news out there lately about bullying and how teenagers thoughtless comments have effected someone who is particularly sensitive about a topic. I don't believe for a minute that kids are more cruel than they have ever been. I know that high school has always been difficult. It's not a new concept that we don't fully realize our effect on the world around us. So what kind of solution can there be? The only answer I can see is that we strive, every day, to make sure we are sending positive waves of energy out into the world. Kindness. Generosity. Positive Examples. Encouraging Messages. The little thngs that can be the seeds for big things to grow!

As my sister Noelle's favorite quote goes - "The mightiest oak was once a tiny acorn."